Last year Condoleezza Rice was one of the speakers at EntreLeadership—a Dave Ramsey event that I’ve continued to attend. Condoleezza shared a poignant story about how as Provost at Stanford she had struggled with one of the professors. He wanted to purchase a $1M telescope and she couldn’t understand why that was important. In the middle of a meeting, she said, “Help me understand… what is so special about this telescope.” The professor used that as an opportunity to humiliate her for her lack of technical knowledge.

     She fought back and replied, “I understand 4 other languages and that ain’t one of them.” The room of +3,000 attendees roared. I was one of them thinking to myself, “She freakin’ showed him!” After allowing the room to settle, she quietly spoke and said something along the lines of this: “After that meeting, one of my confidants took me aside and said, ‘You can’t do that. You can’t embarrass someone in front of everyone. They will never be able to be honest with you and they will never speak up again.’ “ She urged the audience to hear her message: “We have to have those Truth Tellers in our lives.”

     If we keep doing things the way we’ve always done them, we can expect to get the same results. Are we really happy getting the same response we’ve always got? We need to be brave enough to speak up and speak out when we’re on a course that doesn’t make sense to us or isn’t going anywhere.

     What will you be brave enough to do? Rotary has always been a club that has been brave enough and strong enough to fight against what’s easy. Are you courageous enough to be EXTRAordinary!

     YIRS, Michelle

BE THE INSPIRATION